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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-09-19

Perlmutter, The Empty Suit (Seat?) 

I missed this last week.

Congressman Perlmutter released this statement about Gen. Petraeus' report to Congress. It's not worth posting the whole thing--the English teachers out there might go into convulsions. But I will post the section of the statement that actually deals with the report:

I have the utmost respect for Gen. Petraeus and our troops. I agree with him that once again our troops have performed with bravery and distinction.

There you go. That's it. In other words, "I respect the General, but I'm going to completely ignore his actual testimony, anyway."

The problem I have here is that I didn't see this until I went looking for it today. In fact, I saw precious little coverage of the statements of Congressmen in close districts in the media, at all. For that matter, I saw very little coverage of the actual testimony at all.

There are those in the conservative New Media who think the Petraeus testimony was a ground-changing event--I disagree. It's like the old adage: if a tree falls in the forest . . . If a General testifies before Congress and shuts down his critics, but nobody hears it, does it matter. I don't think so.

You know if one of our illustrious Democrat Senators or Reps would have caught the General in a "gotcha" moment, it would have led the coverage on every outlet and been a full-page, front-page story in the newpaper. But they didn't, so it wasn't.

I'm not sure the General's testimony actually matters for purposes of the political debate. And that's how the media controls stories.

And why conservatives MUST get control of a mass-messenging system, and fast.

Addendum: even this inane statement is more than Mark Udall--member of the House Armed Services Committee and man-who-would-be-Senator--had to say . . .

. . .which is nothing.

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Posted by: Michael / 9/19/2007 07:54:00 PM

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